British film show the counter intuitive reality that stop lights make urban roads more dangerous
Cyclists get the brunt of a lot of criticism for not obeying traffic laws. Whenever facilities, resources, or priorities are suggested for cyclists, the motorist first complaint is “why are we giving them anything when they routinely flout the law?” Indeed, my article suggesting changing the law to an Idaho stop (treating stop signs as yields and stop lights as stop signs) generated some of the most comments on this site equally pro and con.
When thinking about traffic, a few years ago I read a cycling expert say that traffic is essentially a series of conflicts that get resolved. That really opened my eyes to thinking about traffic as conflict resolution rather than following arbitrary laws. If an action I take on the road does not cause conflict or prevent me from responding safely in time to conflict, then the rational for any prohibition seems questionable.
To throw more fuel to the fire, this 2 part film from England addresses the question of what would happen if stop lights were removed all together from urban streets.
Part 1
Part 2
The film points out that stop lights developed organically over time to respond to abuses on the road and maybe they are not the best way to keep traffic flowing and make streets safe. Stop lights re-enforce the primacy of cars over all other users on the street, and psychologically drivers turn their minds off a bit if they have green lights. On the contrary when lights are removed, drivers are forced to interact and resolve conflicts themselves. The result surprisingly is not chaos, but better traffic flow and fewer accidents.
So would this work in the urban streets of Austin? Are all the traffic rules a series of band-aids designed to address the symptoms instead of the source of the problems? Would eliminating stop lights in car dominate Texas lead to more automotive primacy or a more balanced use of the streets?
A lot of food for thought.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Not buying this at all. The ‘safety’ uncontrolled intersections buy is at the expense of virtually zero speed (thoroughput) – like when the light at Bee Caves and Walsh Tarlton goes flashing (seems to happen once every couple of months) and everything slows to a crawl (yes, for cyclists too).
The pictures of how these work in other countries show this quite well too – notice how few people/vehicles make it through for a given period of time compared to a signalized intersection.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
But M1EK, at the end of the second video, they said the results were more traffic volume and fewer accidents for the intersection in question. It might also be possible that the traffic slows to a crawl in your instance because people aren’t expecting it. If the natural default is to shut off the brain and the let the signals dictate what you should do, confusion and the additional time it takes to interpret the situation would be natural. This is counter intuitive but the results appear to be the opposite of what you would expect.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
The video is a piece of crap – pure and simple. For intersections with non-trivial amounts of flow at a non-trivial speed, signalization provides more of both. The fact is that starting and stopping a hundred times in a car or a bike is a lot slower than staying stopped for a while and then staying moving for a while.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
They also, of course, picked a degenerate case for traffic signals – heavily used but single-lane roadways with closely spaced and complicated lights. They built the case towards their intended conclusion rather than actually researching the question.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I’m sorry, but how can you say it’s crap? You are just saying what you think to be true. I’m not sure of either, but without empirical evidence (such as trying an intersection both ways for a reasonable amount of time) you are just giving us your opinion. At least they actually tried it here and found in this instance it worked better than what conventional wisdom would dictate.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I’m saying they cherry-picked a poorly signalized intersection (set of intersections) in an area where traffic was particularly degenerate; in an area with very low traffic speeds; and tried to make a conclusion – which doesn’t apply even based on my experience driving and walking in England (which I have done quite a lot of), much less here in the USA.
You may call it just an opinion, but it’s a highly educated one.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
True, but it has been tried elsewhere in Europe. This may be a dead-end, but I think the results warrant at least looking further and experimenting in a U.S. setting. Just because that’s the way we’ve done it for 100 years doesn’t mean that’s the best way.
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
RT @austinon2wheels: Should we eliminate stop lights? http://bit.ly/c4Cg0n The answer will surprise you!
on Oct 8th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
RT @austinon2wheels: Should we eliminate stop lights? http://bit.ly/c4Cg0n The answer will surprise you!
on Oct 10th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
I’m saying that for anybody who looks into traffic at all, it’s obvious that the “before” case is degenerate. You don’t have to try every idea that everybody has anywhere in the world – sometimes you can use your experience and look at the conditions before they applied their idea and understand that the problem wasn’t signalization in general, it was how they were signalizing in particular.
Likewise, I think the 4-way stop at 45th/SCB is stupid – but I would not generalize from that to assume that all 4-way stops are stupid; because I can tell that there’s a reason why the 4-way stop at that particular location is the wrong treatment. (The traffic engineers know it too; it’s the idiot neighbors who are responsible for keeping that POS there).
on Oct 10th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Oh, sorry M1EK, I forgot you are always right about everything. How foolish of me to think otherwise!
Your argument could be used to shoot down lots of things without trying: bike lanes, sharrows, roundabouts, traffic calming. I simply do not believe the Europeans are a different species from us and react differently to stimuli. I don’t think we should stop trying to develop things and this sort of treatment of intersections has been done in several other places in Europe with success. Why on earth would you not want to further understand why it works and if it can make our streets safer, traffic flow better, and reduce emissions.
I admit I don’t know if it’s the right solution or a dead end. You are assuming it doesn’t work without all the facts or a rigorous testing of the options. I’m glad you are not in charge of cancer research.
on Oct 11th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Gotta agree with M1EK on this one … traffic lights are popular because they work. There are some specific situations where they could be better replaced with something else, but when you’re talking about heavy traffic in all directions — they rule for a reason.
on Oct 11th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I’m don’t know if they rule, but we have been using them as a solution (a solution to move cars quickly, mind you, no other goal) for a couple generations. Does that mean they are the best solution? I’m not so sure.
on Oct 12th, 2010 at 9:11 am
It’s weird that people could watch this video and be totally against the idea of even trying this out some places here. It clearly works, at least in specific, controlled situations. I think we should give it a shot.
My only issue is that, for me, the big problem is cars, not lights. There are too many cars in the first place! But I’m a cyclist, so I’m a little biased
on Oct 12th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Elliott, I’m basing it on my educated observation of the video – and don’t appreciate the snark. I only post when I have something to add; would you rather I let you know my opinion when I know I don’t know what I’m talking about?
As for lights, they help pedestrians quite a bit too – especially in countries like ours where the rules about yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks are poorly understood and vigorously ignored by all. Think about how much more fun it is to cross Lamar on foot at an intersection without a traffic light.
Andrew, there’s plenty of bad ideas from all over the world that we don’t need to bother trying out to know they don’t work. All it takes is a bit of educated inference and paying attention to the conditions there and how they differ (or are the same) to the ones here.
In this particular case, the video is clearly slanted to prove the conclusion – they chose, again, a degenerate case of traffic signals. It could easily have been improved through standard traffic engineering, but improving it wasn’t the goal of the people behind this, of course.
on Oct 12th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I understand that in the video they choose terribly engineered traffic areas, but that’s the point. Don’t we have some of those here?
I’m not saying blow up all traffic lights, I just don’t think the idea should be dismissed so readily.
on Oct 14th, 2010 at 10:42 am
No, Andrew, it’s like looking at Afghanistan when it was an anarchy (after the Soviet withdrawl); then seeing how much order the Taliban brought, and saying we ought to try rule by fundamentalist Islamic thugs here, too, because – look, it improved things there!
Almost ANYTHING would have improved that intersection in that video – and the conditions under which this particular improvement took place are vanishingly rare.
on Oct 14th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
lol, ok i’m done. that’s a pretty bad example (Taliban to traffic lights), and i don’t even know why i keep checking the comments.
moral of the story:
NO ONE CHANGE ANY TRAFFIC LIGHTS EVER.
on Oct 14th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Andrew,
I learned a long time ago, Mike always has to have the last word. If you responded, he will almost always have a followup so when you are done with the conversation, just stop commenting.